How many people must die before the City of Johannesburg takes bold steps towards solving the issue of hijacked buildings in the CBD?
On the eve of the one-year anniversary of the deadly fire which razed the Usindiso building in Marshalltown and claimed the lives of 76 people on August 31, firefighters pulled out the bodies of four people who died in a blaze in Jeppestown on Sunday morning.
Three people were treated for injuries and smoke inhalation and at least about 400 have been displaced from their informal settlement of a home which they had set up in the abandoned three-storey building in the CBD.
According to newly installed Joburg mayor Dada Morero, responders saw groups of "residents" carrying heavy-artillery weapons and ammunition leaving the building to escape the blaze.
Two weeks ago 12 shops were gutted in a fire at the corner of Jeppe and Goud street in the Johannesburg CBD on Sunday.
After the Usindiso blaze, Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi established a commission of inquiry in September, headed by retired judge Sisi Khampepe, to investigate the circumstances that led to the disaster.
The recommendations of the damning report released in May — holding the city liable for the deadly rot in the Joburg CBD and taking action against the Johannesburg Property Company (JPC) chief executive Helen Botes — have not been implemented.
City of Joburg COO Tshepo Makola told the Sunday Times this week the biggest challenge remains finding alternative accommodation for the thousands of people living in abandoned and hijacked buildings in the city centre.
As long as bylaws are treated like suggestions and the city does not take steps to enforce them, lives will be at risk
Though not a new problem, leaders are still talking about what needs to be done instead of how much progress they have made.
“It will take a public-private partnership to be successful. We are looking hard at the legal ways of expropriating failed buildings. We will probably have to take over these affected buildings, and in the cases where there are no owners we will have to hand over these buildings to the public sector if we cannot afford to take and manage them ourselves,” said Makola.
In 2018, then Joburg mayor Herman Mashaba said they had identified 500 problem buildings in the city. This was shortly after the fire that ravaged the Bank of Lisbon building where three firefighters died in the line of duty.
In the Jeppestown fire on Sunday, Johannesburg emergency services spokesperson Robert Mulaudzi said the fire in the building at the corner Janie and Jules streets was started at about 1.15am.
"At this stage the cause of the fire is believed to be illegal connection. The fire happened at one of the abandoned buildings in the inner city. They are using all sorts of materials to try and divide this building,” said Mulaudzi.
The Usindiso building was also found to have operated with illegal connections.
Morero said the Jeppestown building was a place of known criminality, begging the question of why the status quo was allowed to prevail.
Lawlessness cannot continue to be the order of the day and the death toll, as well billions of rands in damage associated with this social decay, cannot be allowed to continue.
As long as bylaws are treated like suggestions and the city does not take steps to enforce them, lives will be at risk.
The report found the building was not used for its intended purpose, it was not zoned for residential purposes, that it was abandoned since at least 2019 and there was no upkeep or maintenance.
Even more damning, the report found that the city had failed to act on the contravention of several public health bylaws including accumulation of waste, unhygienic and unsanitary conditions, overcrowding and insufficient supply of potable water.
A Sunday Times visit this past week found the building is now a "stinking toilet" used by the homeless and as a drug den.
Solving the inner-city problem buildings issue should be a priority and not a by-the-way. It's high time heads roll at the offices of the city, which has failed to make meaningful progress in eradicating dilapidated buildings and implementing solutions.
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